


Juxtaposition

by A_Vexing_Hex



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Eventual Sex, M/M, Other, what if
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Vexing_Hex/pseuds/A_Vexing_Hex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Written for Siksta!</p><p>I fought for the longest time over whether or not to make this a single fic, or multichaptered. But it just…seems right to make it continue on! Enjoy.)</p><p>What if John’s roommate hadn’t turned out to be Sherlock Holmes at all? What if it happened to be someone more…</p><p>Sinister?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Juxtaposition

                John Watson clasped the key eagerly in his hand. Odd, to be eager after feeling so lost, so drowned within the harbor of his despair. The metal felt refreshing and renewing, tight against the lines of his palm and bringing the slightest of smiles to the doctor’s lips.

                221B Baker Street. His new residence, rented to him at a reasonable price. A nice place for a bachelor pad, for the soldier just barely home from the war.

                Click step, click step.

                He wasn’t used to the cane just yet, so it was something of a trial to get up the stairs. It was like having a spare limb cradled in his hand, crippling moreso than giving him any sort of advantage over the obstacles around him. It caused the blonde to sigh each time it would tap against the top of a step without reaching the flat surface, and each time it slipped a little from his grasp. Unnatural.

                With some pride, though, he smiled at the door that led into the new rooms that were his, that were his future. That grin broadened and dimpled slightly around the edges, slight creases of happiness that were more rare in his life than he cared to admit. The key turned over and over, five or six times through the ridges that decorated the fingers of his left hand…and then at long last, the bit of metal pressed into the lock and turned. Pins yielded, and he was let in.

                The stranger looked unamused. Bored and restless, wandering with slow, measured steps throughout the scant space. Once or twice his expensive loafers nudged at the cheap furniture that the flat came furnished with…furniture that would certainly have to be replaced. Certain pieces of it were knocked over and lay strewn across the floor.

                Watson stared. He was not to have company, and his new landlady had made it very clear that she lived _alone_ …

                How he wished his pistol could be at his hip right now.

                The eyes that eventually rose to meet his own seemed summoned up from Hell, tinged in the pupils with a sort of blackness that fell in upon itself and never returned. Minute muscle changes drew the ink within them outward and inward, and at long last, the stranger focused completely on John and his cane, and his single piece of luggage, an overnight bag intended to tide him over till the movers arrived.

                “Weren’t you shot in the shoulder?” He asked.

Slight accent. Irish? John couldn’t quite place it, but then again, deduction wasn’t really his specialty. The blonde set his jaw tight and stared back in the direction of his new home’s invader.  “What the hell are you doing here?” Watson didn’t realize it, but he had taken two paces back, toward the door…the dark man had taken a few strides forward in response.

“I’m meant to be here, Johnny. Just as much as you. No need for me to knock or call ahead. You want me staying here with you, and you want what I have to offer.”

When had the gap been closed between them? Quite suddenly, the soldier was staring into what must have been the very heart of the abyss. It was a face that smoldered with a brand of evil that couldn’t quite be categorized. The dark pools of his eyes, the slight curve of brow that accentuated them, the way his lips curled back over his teeth with every grin in a fashion that made him look not unlike some feral beast to be set upon John at any moment’s notice…

“Jim Moriarty.”

The name sounded weighty, and Watson imagined he had heard it somewhere before. Not in a whisper. Probably in a scream.

The door had closed.

John whirled on the suited man, raising a hand, waving it in an obtuse gesture off to one side. “No. No no no—this is _my flat_. **_My home_**. I purchased it from Mrs….Mrs….”

“Mrs. Hudson.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson, only two days ago, and she assured me I would be living quite alone! Now, I will call the police and have them remove you, so. I would…I would appreciate if you would just. Just go. Right this minute.”

Moriarty, as he had been revealed, seemed to contemplate this. Not long. Only a few moments, and he was pacing slow, measured circles around the other man. Predator stalking prey. “Johnny Watson. Johnny has gone for a soldier, and never quite returned home again. Such a pity. Still in the battlefield, painting your face and chest with blood, and wishing you could play the big bad beastie once again.”

It was making Watson a little dizzy, watching Jim pass through his vision, from right to left, and then again, and again.

“Your guessing won’t get you anywhere...” The answer came with some hesitation, and the doctor was suddenly digging in his pocket for his mobile to make good on his previous threat.

He wasn’t able to, though. Suddenly, his back was pressed tight against the wooden door of the flat, and the warmth of Moriarty’s breath was made more searing than any fire he had spent time close to. “A fool guesses from the world around him, **_silly_**.” The word “silly” suddenly became much more menacing when handled in such a man’s vocabulary.

“Better to know. I’ve done my legwork, Johnny Watson, doctor, savior of the British Infantry…And I _know_ that you know what I’m saying is true.  You hide behind your gimpy little leg and play pretend with the other Children of England, see yourself a shrink and wiggle into this sense of security that everything is back to normal.”

John tensed as the tendon in his jaw, the one that looped up behind it and drew it taut, twitched once or twice. There was breath on his ear now, and it seared the delicate flesh.

“ _But nothing will ever be normal again, will it_?”

He had frozen. Watson realized that now. His eyes were wide and staring as that serpentine whisper graced his ear his heart pounding in his chest under a hand that he had only barely realized had taken up some sort of residency there. A rabbit’s heart, aching and pulsing and pounding away, keeping him glued at those two points, to the door and the floor, cemented and hypnotized like some asinine creature that had willingly rolled into a spider’s web.

After several moments, he finally fought back. He gave a shove and a sound of disdain, pushing hard against Moriarty’s chest. “Get out!” The sound of his own voice shocked him. He tossed the cane aside, and dark brown eyes followed it.

“…Oooo.”

A leg lashed out. It connected hard with his bad leg. And John was on the floor, crying out and holding it.

Jim paced. Two, slow, long lines, and then he was standing next to the soldier.

“Get up.”

He quipped the words lightly.

Watson reached for his cane. A cry was given as his fingers were immediately rolled beneath the sole of what he imagined was a very expensive shoe. Not enough to really harm, but enough to stop.

The call came again. “Get up.”

Jim gave something of a laugh, a mocking, twisted sound as John attempted to kick at him. “You mewling moron of a man!” He took a moment, supposedly to appreciate his own verbosity, and then stomped, hard, with the same shoe, at John’s injured leg, tearing a scream from the latter.

John clutched, hard, at the ankle that oppressed him, tears forming unwillingly from the searing pain.

The spider spoke, low and deep.

“It’s in your head, you weak little fuck. Do you understand that? Your psychologist knows it too, but she’s a gold-digger, Johnny! She wants you to spend all of your money talking about your _feelings_ and cradling you, babying you for all your worth until you’ve shit out every last cent you have. Doctor, Doctor…do you want some news? Your fucking limp doesn’t exist, Johnny, and you ought to stand like you have any bollocks left at all. She’s got it in her notes. She knows. But she’ll never te-ellllllll!”

When wrapped in such delicate, shimmering gossamer, John could almost believe those words. His writhing, that desperate thrashing that came from intimate pain, gradually slowed. Gradually stopped.

“You’re locked inside a cage, Johnny. Someone should let you out. Set you free.”

He relaxed his grip around that ankle.

“You want to be the one calling the shots, not a bitch in a cardigan with a clipboard.”

His eyes turned upward to his…oppressor?

“…Now get up.”

It shocked him. It was obvious from the look on Watson’s face, that it completely shocked him that he was able to stand with such ease. The limp, his bad leg, it was all just a—

“I’ll be living here now.” Moriarty quipped without much more of a care, turning and heading over to the window.

“…What do you want?” John cast his gaze aside, still too steeped in wonder to really ponder too hard on what the hell had even just happened.

“I have work for you.”

Nothing would ever be normal again.


End file.
